1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image forming apparatus including an electrophotographic image forming unit configured to form an image on a recording medium and in particular to an image forming apparatus including a mechanism for guiding a recording medium after image forming to a fixing unit for thermally fixing the image.
2. Description of the Related Art
There is known an electrophotographic image forming apparatus configured to form an image on a recording medium such as a sheet using a developer such as toner, and in such an image forming apparatus, the recording medium after the image forming is guided to a fixing unit constituted by, e.g., a heated roller and a pressure roller, to thermally fix the image. However, since a large amount of charges are on the recording medium after the image forming, electric discharge may be caused between the recording medium and, e.g., the heated roller of the fixing unit, causing the developer to fly to disturb the image. As an image forming apparatus proposed to solve this problem, there is known an image forming apparatus that includes a chute for guiding a recording medium after image forming to a fixing unit and that is designed such that the chute has an opening formed in its face opposed to the recording medium, and needle-like grounded electrodes are exposed through the opening. In this design, the recording medium after the image forming can be guided to the fixing unit after the saw-toothed electrode eliminates electricity, suppressing occurrences of the image disturbance due to the electric discharge in some degree.